Friday, March 2, 2018

On March 1, 2018 the Trump Administration announced steep tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, here. The DOW dropped over 400 points. Trump was immediately accused of protectionism and abandoning free markets.

Really? Is there even such a thing as a truly free market in a global economy controlled by globalists, corporatism, fascism, oligarchy and statism?

If you really want to talk protectionism, you first need to understand the pampered businesses that are heavily subsidized by taxpayers. The US has many corporate welfare queens as do other nations. The US sugar barons are so protected that they have been granted a monopoly. The end result is that the US candy industry has outsourced itself to foreign nations where the free market price of sugar keeps them globally competitive; the US has lost thousands of candy making jobs.

For years, the US aircraft giant Boeing and European Airbus have been at each others throats with each alleging political favoritism. Boeing claims that Airbus is heavily subsidized by the EU which it is. However, Airbus claims that Boeing is heavily subsidized via the US defense industry which it is.

The Chinese government heavily subsidizes many industries, including steel and aluminum.

In 2000, China produced only about 11% of the world’s primary aluminum. Now, it produces more than half. This historically unprecedented expansion of production capacity resulted from government policies rather than process improvements or lower input costs. In fact, of the 50 highest-cost aluminum smelters in the world, 37 are located in China.

China’s government has been subsidizing aluminum smelters through direct grants, interest free loans and other “incentive” mechanisms. Absent this massive support scheme, a significant number of the smelters in China would have been forced to declare bankruptcy. Ironically, Chinese smelters often have above average operating costs compared to smelters located outside of China, primarily because of high energy costs.

President Trump campaigned on FREE TRADE so long as it was fair trade. It's certainly NOT free trade when a nation subsidizes its own domestic manufacturing to gain a competitive advantage. China has been gaming the system of trade for decades. Not only does China heavily subsidize a lot of its industries, it also manipulates its currency, the yuan. Keeping your currency low and undervalued makes a nation's exports a whole lot cheaper in foreign import markets. Conversely, a strong currency raises the price of goods.

Therefore, China has largely grown its economy through currency manipulation and subsidies. LOL, this is what passes for free trade these days. It's a freaking joke.

Obviously, true free markets devoid of currency manipulation and corporate subsidies would not only solve trade problems, it would also function as a critical path to free markets.

So why is everybody screaming that Trump is a protectionist when it's perfectly OKAY and acceptable for other nations, OUR ECONOMIC COMPETITORS, to do it? The US economy, American workers and American businesses have been severely hurt by protectionism and subsidies.

I applaud what Trump did and not because I approve of tariffs but because just maybe it's a step in the right direction to achieve truly free markets. Yeah, it's a nasty tit for tat game but the goal of businesses competing in NON SUBSIDIZED and NON MANIPULATED markets is a worthy endgame.

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

The horrifying 2/14/2018 Florida school shooting has raised a ton of questions on the issue of FBI incompetence. Moreover, the Keystone cops look like effective and competent law enforcement compared to the FBI. The FBI had received at least one, if not several credible tips, that Nicholas Cruz was dangerous and expressed a desire to murder students at a school. A school shooting appears to to have been his goal.

Not only did the FBI drop the ball on checking out Cruz to ascertain if he was indeed a threat, the FBI has dropped the ball on many investigations. In 2001, flight schools were reporting to the FBI that Muslim students only wanted to know how to make a plane takeoff but NOT learn how to land it. Well, DUH, that's definitely a big red flag. Being a monstrous bureaucracy, field agents had to filter these incidents up the chain of command in DC where the decision was made to DO NOTHING. That in itself should alarm any sane person. Many field agents were furious and believed that 911 could possibly have been avoided had high ranking FBI officials in DC not ordered field agents to BACK OFF and NOT follow up with an investigation.

Joe DiGenova, a former US Attorney, is a routine guest on the Tucker Carlson show. DiGenova knows the FBI and how it operates quite well. He praises the field agents whom he views as mostly hardworking and competent but he had nothing but contempt for the FBI Directors and its high ranking officials who occupy the 7th floor of FBI HQ in DC. These power players put politics above everything, even national security, something that was proven to be clearly evident in the FBI and DOJ scandals involving high ranking Clinton loyalists actually working inside the FBI and DOJ to spy on Trump and do it with a 'dossier' that Hillary Clinton paid for. Even the creepy James Comey called the dossier 'salacious and unverified' but used it anyway.

As light is finally being shed on FBI incompetence, we are finally learning a whole lot more about what was once perceived and respected as the most honorable and competent law enforcement agency in the world. These days the FBI is barely even a parody of its former glorified self.

On the horrifying tragedy that occurred in Florida on 2/14/2018, there were indeed a ton of red flags including the fact that the police had been called to the shooters house 39 times. Those who knew him in school either didn't like him or were afraid of him More, alarming the FBI had been notified that Nicholas Cruz was dangerous; yet the FBI did NOTHING.

The FBI was warned last month that Nikolas Cruz was an armed psycho who might shoot up a school — but it didn’t bother investigating, the agency admitted Friday.

“A person close to” Cruz called the agency’s tipline on Jan. 5 and reported the 19-year-old had a “desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts” and there was “potential of him conducting a school shooting,” the FBI said in a statement.

But the agency said it failed to pass on any of that information to its Miami field office, even thought its own protocols say he “should have been assessed as a potential threat to life.”

Florida Governor Rick Scott was so upset that he demanded the resignation of FBI Director Christopher Wray, here.

I'm increasingly convinced that the government simply allows lunatics to remain on the loose and buy guns in the hope that they will commit mass murder with firearms. The FBI isn't incompetent, it's got an agenda and that agenda is to allow known nutjobs to terrorize and murder Americans. The end game is to get Americans to BEG the government to forcibly seize all privately owned firearms.

Besides knowing about the Florida School Shooter and the potential danger, the FBI also knew about and botched other investigations involving mass shootings, terrorism and slaughter. Mass shootings and/or domestic terrorism tends to be either very disturbed Americans (possibly under the influence of Big Pharm and psychoactive drugs) or Muslims with a jihadist mission.

The Ft. Hood massacre shooter, Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, had been communicating with terror groups and the FBI and US military knew it. Hasan murdered 13 and wounded dozens.

The FBI botched the background checks on Dylan Roof and approved his purchase of firearms. Roof used those weapons to shoot up a black church and murder 9.

The FBI knew that Omar Mateen, the Muslim who murdered 49 at the Pulse ightclub in Orlando, had pledged allegiance to ISIS. He was allowed to purchase firearms despite known Islamist and terrorist ties.

The FBI knew that the Tsarnaev brothers who committed the Boston Marathon bombing (3 dead, many lost limbs) were Islamist sympathizers. In fact, Russia even warned the US that they were terrorists.

The San Bernandino shooters who murdered 14 and wounded 22, were also known Islamist sympathizers. There were plenty of red flags on that jihadist married couple Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. They traveled to Saudi Arabia, attended a radical mosque in CA and when the neighbors complained about strange thing going on at their residence, nobody did anything. In fact, many neighbors were afraid to do anything for fear of being accused of being anti-Muslim. US intel agencies and the FBI failed to even bother to checkout what these 2 were up to. The warning signs were there.

Then there is the issue of Big Pharm and the very real possibility that psychoactive drugs are indeed responsible for churning folks into homicidal maniacs. The follow article documents numerous accounts of mass murder while under the influence of legal psychoactive drugs.

Fact: A disturbing number of perpetrators of school shootings and similar mass murders in our modern era were either on – or just recently coming off of – psychiatric medications. A few of the most high-profile examples, out of many others, include:

Columbine mass-killer Eric Harris was taking Luvox – like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor and many others, a modern and widely prescribed type of antidepressant drug called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. Harris and fellow student Dylan Klebold went on a hellish school shooting rampage in 1999 during which they killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 24 others before turning their guns on themselves. Luvox manufacturer Solvay Pharmaceuticals concedes that during short-term controlled clinical trials, 4 percent of children and youth taking Luvox – that’s one in 25 – developed mania, a dangerous and violence-prone mental derangement characterized by extreme excitement and delusion.

Patrick Purdy went on a schoolyard shooting rampage in Stockton, California, in 1989, which became the catalyst for the original legislative frenzy to ban “semiautomatic assault weapons” in California and the nation. The 25-year-old Purdy, who murdered five children and wounded 30, had been on Amitriptyline, an antidepressant, as well as the antipsychotic drug Thorazine.

Kip Kinkel, 15, murdered his parents in 1998 and the next day went to his school, Thurston High in Springfield, Oregon, and opened fire on his classmates, killing two and wounding 22 others. He had been prescribed both Prozac and Ritalin.

In 1988, 31-year-old Laurie Dann went on a shooting rampage in a second-grade classroom in Winnetka, Illinois, killing one child and wounding six. She had been taking the antidepressant Anafranil as well as Lithium, long used to treat mania.

In Paducah, Kentucky, in late 1997, 14-year-old Michael Carneal, son of a prominent attorney, traveled to Heath High School and started shooting students in a prayer meeting taking place in the school’s lobby, killing three and leaving another paralyzed. Carneal reportedly was on Ritalin.

In 2005, 16-year-old Jeff Weise, living on Minnesota’s Red Lake Indian Reservation, shot and killed nine people and wounded five others before killing himself. Weise had been taking Prozac.

In another famous case, 47-year-old Joseph T. Wesbecker, just a month after he began taking Prozac in 1989, shot 20 workers at Standard Gravure Corp. in Louisville, Kentucky, killing nine. Prozac-maker Eli Lilly later settled a lawsuit brought by survivors.

Kurt Danysh, 18, shot his own father to death in 1996, a little more than two weeks after starting on Prozac. Danysh’s description of own his mental-emotional state at the time of the murder is chilling: “I didn’t realize I did it until after it was done,” Danysh said. “This might sound weird, but it felt like I had no control of what I was doing, like I was left there just holding a gun.”

John Hinckley, age 25, took four Valium two hours before shooting and almost killing President Ronald Reagan in 1981. In the assassination attempt, Hinckley also wounded press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and policeman Thomas Delahanty.

What we need is a thorough investigation into incidents of mass murder. How frequently do they occur when individuals are NOT on antidepressants, psychoactive-psychotropic drugs or other drugs to control anxiety? Then compare these incidents with the documented cases of mass murder when it was known that the killer was indeed under the influence of legally prescribed drugs.

According to Wikipedia, the definition of a psychoactive-psychotropic drug is:

A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, or psychotropic is a chemical substance that changes brain function and results in alterations in perception, mood, consciousness or behavior.

That's pretty serious stuff. Then there is the issue that Americans expect a pharmaceutical or a pill to solve all their issues and problems because they lack the ability to cope with life's routine problems. Americans have been taught that they must be happy all the time, otherwise they are mentally ill and require treatment. The simple truth is that humans do evolve through pain, unpleasantness and NOT always getting their way. That's just how life rolls and it's called growing up.

America is increasingly becoming One Nation Under Big Pharm and it's becoming clearly evident that there are indeed credible links between mass murders and LEGALLY prescribed drugs. Illegal drugs such as marijuana and other do not seem to be a factor in churning a human being into a mass murderer.

The bottom line: most mass murderers seem to be religious nuts or folks under the influence of Big Pharm.

The hysteria over the Florida school shooting is understandable. After all, children were mowed down in cold blood in a place that was deemed safe - their school. It's hard to imagine a worse pain than burying your children and loved ones who died in an act of violence that makes no sense. Consequently, there are now screams for more rigid gun control and even calls for abolishing the 2nd amendment and forcibly confiscating all firearms.

Disarming law abiding American citizens won't solve the problem of mass murderers, whether they are religious fanatics or mentally ill and disturbed for whatever reason(s) . In fact, it will only make innocent folks more vulnerable and defenseless.

Before we respond emotionally to a painful tragedy, shouldn't we first investigate and find out why these horrors happen?

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

This post is a very informative Forbes.com article that discloses the size and scope of the massive federal bureaucracy. Forbes compiled the information from a far larger and much more detailed report of OpenTheBooks.com. I've added highlights. The Swamp is eating us alive! While politicians on both sides of the isle talk about 'Draining the Swamp', nobody is serious about doing it. It's all part of the fraud perpetrated upon American taxpayers and voters. As government grows itself at all level, we are eventually confronted with the real possibility that the number of government workers who vote for a living surpasses the number of folks who work for a living.

"“It’s hard, when you’re up to your armpits in alligators, to remember you came here to drain the swamp.” – President Ronald Reagan (1983)

“What we have to do is drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.” – Rep. Nancy Pelosi (2006)

The Republican Congress and president argue it’s time to “drain the swamp” and cut spending. It’s not a new fight, but here’s why it’s so difficult: Our OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – Mapping the Swamp, A Study of the Administrative State describes the size, scope, and power of the federal bureaucracy.

Today’s federal bureaucrats are paid $1.1 million a minute, $66 million an hour, and over $524 million a day – and that’s just the cash compensation cost. Taxpayers also pay for lucrative perks like weeks of paid time-off, performance bonuses and padded retirement pensions.

Using our interactive mapping tool, quickly review the 2 million federal employee salaries and bonuses by ZIP code across America. Just click a pin and scroll down to see the results rendered in the chart beneath the map. See your local piece of the swamp: how much are the federal employees in your backyard earning? Which agency employs them, and what is their job title?

Here are a few of our key findings:

1. $136 Billion in Cash Compensation – The federal government disclosed 1.97 million employees across 122 independent agencies and departments. In FY2016, these 2 million workers received $136 billion in compensation. If we could factor in another 2 million undisclosed employees – at the Department of Defense and on active military and other agencies – the cost would be much higher.

2. $22.6 Billion in Time Off and Benefits – After just three years of public service, federal employees receive ten federal holidays, 13 sick days, and 20 vacation days per year. That is eight and a half weeks of paid time off (43 days per year). That benefit costs taxpayers an estimated $22.6 billion annually.

3. $1.5 Billion to Bonuses – The federal government awarded 330,713 bonuses for $351 million (FY2016). However, the federal union agreement bars the disclosure of the $1.1 billion in performance bonuses. So, who received how much? It’s time to open the books on the billion-dollar performance bonuses. The largest federal bonus last year ($141,525) didn’t go to a rocket scientist or a doctor researching a cancer cure; it went to Bart Ferrell, a Human Resources Manager in charge of processing payroll at the Presidio Trust. Ferrell’s total pay last year exceeded $300,000.

4.A Six-Figure Minimum Wage? In 78 large agencies, the average employee made more than $100,00. We found 30,000 bureaucrats out-earning every governor of the 50 states with salaries exceeding $190,000. The number of federal employees making $200,000 or more has skyrocketed by 165 percent during the past six years. 'Diet and Nutrition' employees can make up to $207,060; 'Food Services' workers in the prisons system can bring in $136,622; and 'Laundry Operations' employees at the VA can make $101,694. Even ‘photography’ is lucrative, averaging more than $80,000 with top pay reaching $157,971

5.The Administrative State’s Legal Team – We found more than 35,000 lawyers in the federal government, but fewer than 12,000 of them pursue crime and criminals at the Department of Justice. The rest are essentially regulators, sprawled across 94 departments and agencies. These lawyers are pricey, costing taxpayers $4.8 billion. On average, each federal lawyer earned a salary of $136,006 – and including benefits – cost the American taxpayer $175,000 apiece.

6.The Administrative State’s Department of Self-Promotion – In FY2016, 70 departments spent $368 million on more than 3,600 in-house public affairs and marketing employees. On average, these employees made $101,827 each. The Department of Agriculture employed the most public affairs employees with a total of 544. The U.S. Postal Service paid James Cochrane, the chief marketing and sales officer, $250,335. Our investigation revealed another $2 billion spent on contracts with outside public relations firms over an eight-year period.

7.The Reason Behind Waiting Lines for Veterans – The Department of Veterans Affairs employs one-fifth of the entire disclosed federal workforce for a total payroll cost of $30 billion, which is more than the entire budget of 16 state governments. Still, sick veterans wait to see a doctor because 92 percent of workers on their payroll aren’t doctors. Over the past five years, the VA added 60,000 new positions to payroll, but less than one in ten were doctors. The bloat at the VA is stunning. For example, the VA employed 171 interior designers costing $50 million over the past four years. The VA facility in Palo Alto, California, employed the most interior designers – nine in total. Palo Alto is the same facility that spent $700,000 on sculptures for blind veterans in 2016.

There are many more examples and more remains hidden.

For example, the largest swamp of opacity is the $125 billion in annual federal pension payout. Current law prohibits disclosure, but taxpayers deserve to see all the details. We worked with Congressman Ron DeSantis (FL-6) on the Taxpayer Funded Pension Disclosure Act of 2017 that would open the books on retirement annuities. Wouldn’t you like to know the pension amount of retired IRS boss Lois Lerner?

President Reagan rightly described how difficult it is to rein in the administrative state. We agree and taxpayers are right to be concerned about high salaries, lucrative benefit packages, excessive bonuses and cushy retirement pensions.

What’s in your backyard? Search the federal bureaucracy by ZIP code and then call your member of Congress. Ask what they’ve done to squeeze out waste and bloat within the federal payroll.

Adam Andrzejewski is the CEO and Founder of OpenTheBooks.com – one of the largest private databases of government spending in the world. Download our full report, Mapping The Swamp, A Study of the Administrative State (FY2016), here.

When referencing this piece, please use the following citation: 'Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of OpenTheBooks.com, as published at Forbes.' Andrzejewski (say: Angie-eff-ski)"

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Governments achieve credibility and survive based on the TRUST and approval of the people. When that trust is shattered, government institutions are jeopardized when We the People learn of public corruption, abuse of power and outright lawlessness. It's bad enough when corruption occurs at lower level government institutions but when it occurs at the highest levels, government power needs to be directly challenged by We the People and the criminals need to be prosecuted breaking the law. Right now the most corrupt institutions in the federal government (besides the scandal ridden DOD-Pentagon that has lost TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars) are the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In a blatant and illegal attempt to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, high ranking DOJ and FBI officials engaged in egregious crimes that included perjury and falsifying legal documents to secure FISA warrants on their political enemies, namely Donald Trump, the Trump Campaign, Trump's associates and the Trump Transition Team. Some of the perjury occurred BEFORE the November 8, 2016 election but some occurred AFTER the historic election.

As the perjury of high ranking DOJ and FBI officials is becoming glaringly apparent despite nonstop media efforts to squash the story and ignore this criminal assault on our Constitution and institutions of justice and law enforcement (DOJ and FBI), it's important to put into context the facts surrounding one of the biggest political scandals in American history.

Hillary Clinton was expected to easily win the 2016 election; it never dawned on anybody that she could lose. Therefore, protecting Clinton from criminal investigations and prosecution was the highest priority of the Obama Administration and his DOJ and FBI. When Trump unexpectedly won the election, panic set in as Obama and his highest ranking officials scrambled to shield themselves from what they knew would be justifiable accusations that screamed COVER-UP, perjury, dereliction of duty, political witch hunts and even criminal activity. To exonerate themselves and avoid criminal exposure, they concocted elaborate schemes to set up Trump and his associates as Russian agents. However, the schemes and scams started before Trump even won the election but they were accelerated after his victory over Clinton.

Once it was clear that Trump would be the Republican nominee, the War on Trump commenced. Forbes.com did a long and informative timeline, here, that includes:

Summer of 2016. Comey’s first attempt to get FISA Warrant against Trump campaign official is denied.Comey sought a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page – again, under the theory that he could be an agent of a foreign government.

September/October 2016. DOJ Official Bruce Ohr’s wife goes to work for Fusion GPS (the firm that was the conduit between the Hillary Campaign and dossier author ex-British spy Christopher Steele). Ohr later funnels information from his wife to the FBI.

October of 2016. Second Comey FISA request relying on the Steele Dossier – FISA Warrant Issued to spy on Carter Page. Andrew McCabe, in time, makes it clear that without the dossier, there would have been no FISA warrant.

The dossier has never been verified – to this day. Comey told Trump in January of 2017 that the dossier was “unverified.”

Yet, Comey represented to the FISA Court that the dossier was credible – in part, by citing a Yahoo news story on the matter. However, Comey knew that that story was planted by the dossier author Christopher Steele. In other words, it was not an independent verification of the dossier.

All in all, Comey swore under oath that the Court should consider the dossier credible evidence so that the FBI could spy on Trump campaign official Carter Page – even though Page had already left the campaign. Given that it was known that Page already left the campaign, it could well be that Carter Page was the fall guy excuse to begin domestic spying on others.

Without question, Comey misled the FISA Court by submitting and vouching for the unverified dossier and pushing the Yahoo News story. Those were not the only questionable acts, misrepresentations nor omissions of Comey.

The FBI and DOJ, at the time they made the original FISA application, also were aware of the following - ALL OF WHICH WAS HIDDEN FROM THE FISA COURT:

a) Hillary’s campaign and the DNC paid for the dossier - a fact which, if known, would give rise to judicial questions of potential evidentiary bias.

b) Christopher Steele tells a DOJ official Bruce Ohr that Steele was "desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president." Another fact that, if known, would give rise to judicial questions of potential evidentiary bias.....

October 2016. Comey announces the reopening of email review and then, before the election, clears Hillary again.....

November 2016, Hillary campaign immediately blames Russian interference and that narrative is maintained for months.

December of 2016. Obama Administration begins process to relax rules on sharing intelligence about Americans. The rules previously provided that if an American was speaking to a foreigner who was being surveilled, the American’s name would be masked in the intelligence documents. Obama made it easier to share the actual names – which so happened to be Trump transition officials trying to do their job

Three times thereafter, the FBI and the DOJ reapplied for a FISA warrant and never apprised the Court of their prior misrepresentations and/or omissions. The existing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who currently oversees the Mueller investigation, was one of the officials who made a FISA warrant reapplication. It has also been said that Rosenstein, on January 10, threatened House Members with legal proceedings if they continue to push oversight of this matter.

It's clear that Hillary Clinton pals within the Obama Administration illegally implemented it's War on Trump shortly after it was clear that he would win the nomination. What is even more remarkable is that while Comey himself called the dossier 'salacious and unverified', he used it anyway to secure a FISA warrant on Carter Page. Page is a former US Navel Academy graduate who honorably served 5 years in the US Navy; he also worked for Merill Lynch for a number of years in its energy sector. For more on Carter Page, I've documented his history and the fact that he was nothing more than an investment banker guy who wanted to do energy deals.

Back to the FBI and DOJ discussion on securing FISA warrants - The above disturbing facts not withstanding, there is a blockbuster report from The Hill and written by investigative journalist SHARYL ATTKISSON on the Woods Procedures. BEFORE 911, there were serious concerns that the 1978 FISA law was being violated and abused by the 2 agencies most involved in securing FISA warrants - the FBI and DOJ. The Hill reports: "Woods Procedures were named for Michael Woods, the FBI official who drafted the rules as head of the Office of General Counsel’s National Security Law Unit. They were instituted in April 2001 to “ensure accuracy with regard to … the facts supporting probable cause” after recurring instances, presumably inadvertent, in which the FBI had presented inaccurate information to the FISA court."

Not only was the FBI highly concerned about unsubstantiated and unverified information being used to illegally secure FISA warrants, the FBI actually went so far as to change how it operates in securing such warrants. Here's the real blockbuster scandal and it's a smoking gun that hardly anybody is talking about.

Prior to Woods Procedures, “[i]ncorrect information was repeated in subsequent and related FISA packages,” the FBI told Congress in August 2003. “By signing and swearing to the declaration, the headquarters agent is attesting to knowledge of what is contained in the declaration.”

It’s incredible to think of how many FBI and Justice Department officials would have touched the multiple applications to wiretap Trump campaign adviser Carter Page — allegedly granted, at least in part, on the basis of unverified and thus prohibited information — if normal procedures were followed.

The FBI’s complex, multi-layered review is designed for the very purpose of preventing unverified information from ever reaching the court. It starts with the FBI field offices.

According to former FBI agent Asha Rangappa, who wrote of the process last year in JustSecurity.org, the completed FISA application requires approval through the FBI chain of command “including a Supervisor, the Chief Division Counsel (the highest lawyer within that FBI field office), and finally, the Special Agent in Charge of the field office, before making its way to FBI Headquarters to get approval by (at least) the Unit-level Supervisor there.”

Next, it goes to the Justice Department “where attorneys from the National Security Division comb through the application to verify all the assertions made in it,” wrote Rangappa. “DOJ verifies the accuracy of every fact stated in the application. If anything looks unsubstantiated, the application is sent back to the FBI to provide additional evidentiary support – this game of bureaucratic chutes and ladders continues until DOJ is satisfied that the facts in the FISA application can both be corroborated and meet the legal standards for the court. After getting sign-off from a senior DOJ official (finally!).”
There’s more

But there are even more reviews and processes regarding government applications for wiretaps designed to make sure inaccurate or unverified information isn’t used.

In November 2002, the FBI implemented a special FISA Unit with a unit chief and six staffers, and installed an automated tracking system that connects field offices, headquarters, the National Security Law Branch and the Office of Intelligence, allowing participants to track the process during each stage.

Considering that the FBI itself recognized its own FISA abuses even BEFORE 911 and rewrote the rules governing how evidence is secured and validated for FISA warrants and presentation to the FISA court, it's clear that substantial oversight and monitoring procedures were put into place for the express purpose of preventing FISA abuse by both the FBI and DOJ.

Furthermore it's clear that government attorneys and officials who ignore the rules are criminals who are literally breaking the law, especially laws and rules expressly written to avoid surveillance abuse.

The reckless Obama Administration and its DOJ and FBI officials and lawyers were so arrogant that they viewed themselves as ABOVE THE LAW. Who is responsible for signing off on FISA warrants with the knowledge that the evidence was unsubstantiated, unverified and possibly even false? SHARYL ATTKISSON exposes the criminals:

Yet Comey allegedly signed three of the FISA applications on behalf of the FBI. Deputy Director Andrew McCabe reportedly signed one and former Attorney General Sally Yates, then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein each reportedly signed one or more.

If the criminals who perpetrated such a colossal fraud upon the American public to promote their own personal politican agendas are NOT criminally prosecuted and themselves brought to justice, then there can never be any justice in America. The FBI and DOJ will forever be tainted as corrupt and beyond redemption.

Americans can thank President Obama, Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates, Rod Rosenstein, Dana Boente and many more collaborators into churning America and its criminal justice system into something more reminiscent of Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia and other totalitarian regimes.

To allow such folks, folks who held HIGH level positions in the DOJ and FBI, to get a pass on their crimes is a CRIME. These folks were all lawyers who fully understood the law and they also fully understood that they were breaking the law on behalf of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. These high ranking DOJ and FBI lawyers made the decision to ignore the law to promote their own political agenda by implicating the innocent in the most outrageous of diabolical of schemes and scams.

If this is what passes for truth, justice and accountability in America, we are indeed doomed.

Sunday, February 4, 2018

The name 'Carter Page' is smoking hot because he apparently is being portrayed as a Russian agent, a Russian spy, a traitor and the man who is alleged to have interjected himself and Russian interests into the Trump campaign. Nothing could be further from the truth; in fact it's all a big fat nothing burger of a lie perpetrated by the enemies of President Trump.

Background information on Carter Page: Born in 1971, Page was raised in Poughkeepsie, NY. He graduated from the US Navel Academy in 1993 in the top 10% of his class. He honorably served 5 years in the US Navy, earned a masters degree from Georgetown University in National Security Studies. He also earned an MBA from NYU and a PHD from the University of London.

His business career kicked off in in 2000 when he began working for Merrill Lynch in London and he specialized in energy. He was also a VP of a Merrill Lynch Moscow office, as well as Chief Operating Officer of Merrill Lynch's energy and power department in NY. His business career focused exclusively on energy and in that capacity he worked on energy deals with Russia and other nations. There is nothing unusual about his career path trajectory. Energy is a big business and all investment banking houses have energy interests and divisions.

Carter Page was an obscure nobody who just happened to work on energy deals, and certainly not a man whose name and work would alarm anybody. In 2008, he left Merrill Lynch to form his own company, Global Energy Capital, a one man operation that never took off. Throughout his energy based investment banking career, Page was critical of US foreign policy, and specifically its attitude toward Russia as it relates to very punishing sanctions.
Enter: POTUS aspirant Donald Trump who was not an internationally travelled man with serious connections to the rest of the world; in fact, Trump knew very little about how the rest of the world operates. Therefore, he sought the counsel of folks who had been 'around the block' so to speak and on a variety of issues. Energy is always a top issue and Russia is a major energy player.

Byron York of the Washington Examiner did an excellent analysis of Page and wrote:

There were reasons for the FBI to notice Page. Described as an "energy executive," he lived for a time in Russia, was always trying to drum up business, often in Russia, and his name popped up in a case against three Russians who in 2013 were posing as businessmen and trying to recruit Americans to become Russian agents. The Russians apparently wanted to enlist Page, who in the end was not accused of any wrongdoing and has denied any contacts with the Russians beyond ordinary business communications. For their part, the Russians came to view Page as something less than a prize; one of them was captured on a wiretap calling him an "idiot."

So Page was no Russian agent, nor did he ever appear to be in danger of becoming a Russian agent. Nevertheless, the case put Page on the FBI's Russia radar screen.....

Hill investigators have been baffled by the FBI's apparent treatment of the "idiot" Page as a central player in the Trump-Russia affair, instead of an eccentric presence on the periphery with no connection to Trump, or even people close to Trump.

Or maybe they targeted Page for wiretapping because they could. Page had pre-existing contacts with Russian agents, handily outlined in a fairly recent court case. He was beyond question in Moscow in July. And the dossier said the Russians offered Page a corrupt bargain to end U.S. sanctions in exchange for millions of dollars. (One question not often asked: How was Page, not elected to anything and not even on anyone's staff, supposed to end U.S. sanctions?)"

York's fact filled article goes on to explain and document a lot, including Harry Reid intervening and attempting to a make big case out of this nothing burger, as well as even questioning the basis for the FBI's obsession with Carter Page who is more of an FBI victim than a big player in the energy business. Morever, despite false allegations that Page was an integral part of the Trump Campaign, it's been documented that Page never even met Trump, here. He was a low level volunteer and certainly not someone who was valued as knowledgeable contributor to policy and campaign decisions.

The bottom line is that Page was never more than a guy who wanted to do energy deals and viewed sanctions as a powerful deterrent. Hence, both Page and the Russians wanted sanctions relief. Also, it should be noted that according to York's article, neither Trump nor his closest associates ever had much of anything to do with Page. He was just a guy who had extensive experience with Russia and energy.

The real smoking gun that the Democrats, FBI and other Trump haters are making is that Page, an incredibly minor play in energy, was so powerful that he would induce Trump to nullify sanctions against Russia IF TRUMP WERE ELECTED. Like everything else in the DOJ-FBI-Democrat witch hunt against Trump, there is ZERO evidence. Just because Page and Russia wanted sanctions relief doesn't in any way imply that it will happen. I personally view sanctions as morally reprehensible because they tend to kill innocent civilians. Madeleine Albright publicly delighted in bragging about the fact that US sanctions against Iraq resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi babies and children. US Cuban sanctions severely hurt the Cuban people and denied them vital medicines. Sanctions have never beene anything but cruel humanitarian horrors.

Lobbying to achieve sanctions relief is nothing new; in fact it's very common.

Exxon lobbies US government on Iran sanctions "According to Bloomberg, the Texas-based oil company has hired a lobbying firm founded by former Republican Senator Don Nickles to press the US government on lifting sanctions against Tehran. Western companies are eager to work on Iranian fields because they are among the largest and cheapest to develop, it quoted one economist as saying."

Lobbying is a big business in America and money is used to bribe politicians. Foreign lobbying is largely regulated by FARA or Foreign Agents Registration Act which is a complicated law requiring lawyers and lots of paperwork. Since the world doesn't operate on free market principles and people and businesses are not free to conduct business because it's controlled by bureaucrats and protectionist laws, businesses are forced to enter the murky world of lobbying just to gain access to government officials if they want to do business.

The lobbying industry operates largely in secret but that's because lobbying laws are complicated and politicians and lobbyists prefer that the public NOT know about how politicians are bought and paid for by special interests and their lobbyists. Pathetically, FARA is a 1938 bill and some in Congress want to rewrite lobbying laws but not in the interest of greater transparency and accountability but to shield and protect Congress Critters. Congressional bills that focus on sunlight, openness and transparency are practically non existent. FisaGate, the Mueller Inquisition and Carter Page are indeed bringing the issue to the attention of the public and Congress is considering rewriting laws on foreign lobbying.

Back to Carter Page. He's just a guy whose lifelong business experience of investment banking and energy managed to get him in the cross hairs of politics, a presidential campaign, the FBI, the DOJ and all the sleaze associated with the fake Christopher Steele dossier that was used to secure a FISA warrant to spy on him, the Trump campaign, Trump associates and the Trump Transition Team.

How bad is Russiaphobia in the US? It's so dangerously deranged that anybody who has contacts with a Russian may be considered a Russian agent or spy and subject to criminal prosecution.

Paul Manafort chaired Trump’s campaign. The poor guy just did not realize that he couldn’t even exchange pleasantries with anybody Russian. If you are not anti-Russian, then you must be pro-Russian. That’s how the nitwits in the U.S. intelligence agencies think. And if you’re pro-Russian, then you must be in their pockets or a spy or a dupe. You don’t deserve to be making U.S. policy, which must remain anti-Russian until America manages to break up Russia and take it over.

You see, American citizens do not have the freedom to talk with Russians. The people they talk to may be spies, after all.

America is the land of the perpetually paranoid. This is the kind of thing that happens in police states with secret courts and laws so open to interpretation that everybody is a criminal.

Port-au-Prince is about the size of Chicago. But it doesn’t have a sewer system. It’s one of the largest cities in the world without one.
That’s a big problem, but never more so than during a time of cholera.....

The cumulative sewage of 3 million people flows through open ditches. It mixes with ubiquitous piles of garbage. Each night, an all-but-invisible army of workers called bayakou descend into man-sized holes with buckets to remove human waste from septic pits and latrines, then dump it into the canals that cut through the city.

That is a truly disgusting and deadly way for human beings to live because such filth breeds disease.

Haiti was devastated by an earthquake in 2010 that took 230,000 lives, demolished over 100,000 homes (shacks) and further impoverished an already grotesquely impoverished nation and people. The international community raised nearly $15 billion to rebuild Haiti; CBS summarized the money raised and how much was needed to rebuilt Haiti. Economist and experts estimated that $8 to $14 billion was needed so Haiti isn't a disaster today for lack of money.

CBS News set out to answer what seemed like a simple question: how much has been spent on and promised to Haiti?

The answer didn't exist in one place.

So we compiled the best figures available to come up with a total.

Here's what we came up with:

Total Donations for Haiti Earthquake Relief:

$4 billion: NGO's and charities. That includes $66 million raised by record-breaking Hope for Haiti Now telethon.

$1.019 billion: U.S. tax dollars through USAID (as of April 9)

$1.15 billion: U.S. tax dollars (for future redevelopment)

$8.75 billion (for redevelopment from non-U.S. countries and world bodies)

TOTAL: $14.9+ billion

(Not included is debt forgiveness which the US and other countries are offering Haiti)

Haiti's government has estimated losses from the quake to be approximately $8 billion. Economists and world bodies have estimated the cost of rebuilding at between $8 billion and $14 billion.

The $14.9 billion donated so far works out to nearly $10,000 for each of the estimated 1.5 million Haitians left homeless and displaced by the disaster. On average, workers there earn just $4 a day.

Much has been written about Haiti and what is widely perceived as massive reconstruction fraud involving Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. Bill Clinton managed to get himself appointed as the UN Representative for Aid to Haiti. Putting a Clinton in charge of MONEY is never a good idea considering that they are proven thieves and shakedown artists of the worst sort and it doesn't get any worse or immoral than enriching yourself and your pals from a debilitating and massive human tragedy. The UN is also notoriously corrupt.

To further complicate what appears to be graft and corruption, much of it was facilitated by Hillary Clinton who as Secretary of State controlled a lot of money (billions) earmarked for Haiti as well as who got the money and lucrative contracts. Haiti didn't end up with much and despite nearly $15 billion being spent (on what nobody is really even sure), large percentages of that money appear to have been doled out to Clinton pals and Haiti remains a diseased cesspool without even a sewer system. Yeah, it's what President Trump would call a shithole because, well, it is and not because there wasn't sufficient money to vastly improve Haiti. However, the money got pissed away as political and Clinton Foundation favors.

Despite over $10 billion in disaster relief, Haiti largely remains just as worst off as it did before the earthquake. Part of the reason appears to be that funds that were supposed to be used to develop the country were siphoned off by corrupt political and business elites. Many of those elites are connected to Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have had a long and substantial impact on the country.

The FOIA documents reveal that a senior aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “gave special attention to those identified by the abbreviations “FOB” (friends of Bill Clinton) or “WJC VIPs” (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs).

Friends of Bill indeed! While the Shadowproof article expands on some of Bill's friends, an article by the National Review significantly exposes even more shady transactions and corrupt schemes by Bill, Hill and the Clinton Foundation. Because there are so many of them, I posted the National Review article on a separate blog post and highlighted the worst of the reported corruption. That post is an integral component of this blog post so its worth a click.

The real tragedy is that Haitian relief amounted to $10,000 for each Hatian in a country where the average wage is $4 a day. It would have been far more productive and moral just to give each Hatian $10,000. They could have rebuilt their homes, start businesses and work together to build a better life. Instead the money was siphoned off and landed in the pockets of the friends of Bill and Hill.

Back in 2013, I blogged about Haiti, its poverty and how the lack of secure property rights keeps poor countries poor and corrupt. However, the actual history of Haiti is also worth knowing because you can't understand the tragedy that is Haiti without understand its tragic history.

At the very least, the shadowy sleaze and theft of what really happened in Haiti should be investigated because it's an issue of corruption, specifically billions in US tax payer dollars being diverted to political friends and associates. However, relief agencies are also profit centers who flock to disaster zones to make money. It's never about helping the victims. A lot of Haitian relief money was pissed away on luxury housing, cars and disaster area pay (relief workers frequently earned double their salaries when deployed to disaster areas). The relief and aid business is also pretty damn corrupt. These folks aren't Mother Theresas! They seek creature comforts, great food and fat paychecks.

Finally, what did the Haitians actually end up with? Just some luxury hotels and an industrial park that was paid for with US taxdollars but is now vacant (that story is documented in the National Review article). Meanwhile, the Haitians themselves are scooping up shit and raw sewage that is being dumped in lakes rivers which of course is an environmental disaster with severe health consequences

If you want to take about a shithole, the first thing that should enter your mind is Bill and Hillary Clinton. They and their pals made a ton of money off of Haiti.

Until there is an investigation and audit of the $15 billion, there can be no justice for the Hatians. It takes a dark and sordid soul to look at this depth of human suffering and feel nothing or see nothing but dollar signs. Rich folks robbing desperately poor folks like this is as low as it gets.

There can be no question that Bill and Hillary Clinton are 2 of the most corrupt, venal, evil and thieving politicians in US political history. Their schemes and scams are legendary and well documented but this post focuses exclusively on Haiti, how the Clintons robbed Haiti and is a reprint of a National Review article, along with passages that I highlight.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article is excerpted from Dinesh D’Souza’s new book, Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party.

In January 2015 a group of Haitians surrounded the New York offices of the Clinton Foundation. They chanted slogans, accusing Bill and Hillary Clinton of having robbed them of “billions of dollars.” Two months later, the Haitians were at it again, accusing the Clintons of duplicity, malfeasance, and theft. And in May 2015, they were back, this time outside New York’s Cipriani, where Bill Clinton received an award and collected a $500,000 check for his foundation. “Clinton, where’s the money?” the Haitian signs read. “In whose pockets?” Said Dhoud Andre of the Commission Against Dictatorship, “We are telling the world of the crimes that Bill and Hillary Clinton are responsible for in Haiti.”

Haitians like Andre may sound a bit strident, but he and the protesters had good reason to be disgruntled. They had suffered a heavy blow from Mother Nature, and now it appeared that they were being battered again — this time by the Clintons. Their story goes back to 2010, when a massive 7.0 earthquake devastated the island, killing more than 200,000 people, leveling 100,000 homes, and leaving 1.5 million people destitute.

The devastating effect of the earthquake on a very poor nation provoked worldwide concern and inspired an outpouring of aid money intended to rebuild Haiti. Countries around the world, as well as private and philanthropic groups such as the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, provided some $10.5 billion in aid, with $3.9 billion of it coming from the United States.

Haitians such as Andre, however, noticed that very little of this aid money actually got to poor people in Haiti. Some projects championed by the Clintons, such as the building of industrial parks and posh hotels, cost a great deal of money and offered scarce benefits to the truly needy. Port-au-Prince was supposed to be rebuilt; it was never rebuilt. Projects aimed at creating jobs proved to be bitter disappointments. Haitian unemployment remained high, largely undented by the funds that were supposed to pour into the country. Famine and illness continued to devastate the island nation.

The Haitians were initially sympathetic to the Clintons. One may say they believed in the message of “hope and change.” With his customary overstatement, Bill told the media, “Wouldn’t it be great if they become the first wireless nation in the world? They could, I’m telling you, they really could.”

I don’t blame the Haitians for falling for it; Bill is one of the world’s greatest story-tellers. He has fooled people far more sophisticated than the poor Haitians. Over time, however, the Haitians wised up. Whatever their initial expectations, many saw that much of the aid money seems never to have reached its destination; rather, it disappeared along the way.

Where did it go? It did not escape the attention of the Haitians that Bill Clinton was the designated UN representative for aid to Haiti. Following the earthquake, Bill Clinton had with media fanfare established the Haiti Reconstruction Fund. Meanwhile, his wife Hillary was the United States secretary of state. She was in charge of U.S. aid allocated to Haiti. Together the Clintons were the two most powerful people who controlled the flow of funds to Haiti from around the world.

The Haitian protesters noticed an interesting pattern involving the Clintons and the designation of how aid funds were used. They observed that a number of companies that received contracts in Haiti happened to be entities that made large donations to the Clinton Foundation. The Haitian contracts appeared less tailored to the needs of Haiti than to the needs of the companies that were performing the services. In sum, Haitian deals appeared to be a quid pro quo for filling the coffers of the Clintons.

For example, the Clinton Foundation selected Clayton Homes, a construction company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, to build temporary shelters in Haiti. Buffett is an active member of the Clinton Global Initiative who has donated generously to the Clintons as well as the Clinton Foundation. The contract was supposed to be given through the normal United Nations bidding process, with the deal going to the lowest bidder who met the project’s standards. UN officials said, however, that the contract was never competitively bid for.

Clayton offered to build “hurricane-proof trailers” but what they actually delivered turned out to be a disaster. The trailers were structurally unsafe, with high levels of formaldehyde and insulation coming out of the walls. There were problems with mold and fumes. The stifling heat inside made Haitians sick and many of them abandoned the trailers because they were ill-constructed and unusable.

My comment: Shame on Warren Buffett for participating in stiffing the Hatians for fun and profit!

The Clintons also funneled $10 million in federal loans to a firm called InnoVida, headed by Clinton donor Claudio Osorio. Osorio had loaded its board with Clinton cronies, including longtime Clinton ally General Wesley Clark; Hillary’s 2008 finance director Jonathan Mantz; and Democratic fundraiser Chris Korge who has helped raise millions for the Clintons.

Normally the loan approval process takes months or even years. But in this case, a government official wrote, “Former President Bill Clinton is personally in contact with the company to organize its logistical and support needs. And as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has made available State Department resources to assist with logistical arrangements.”"

InnoVida had not even provided an independently audited financial report that is normally a requirement for such applications. This requirement, however, was waived. On the basis of the Clinton connection, InnoVida’s application was fast-tracked and approved in two weeks.

The company, however, defaulted on the loan and never built any houses. An investigation revealed that Osorio had diverted company funds to pay for his Miami Beach mansion, his Maserati, and his Colorado ski chalet. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering in 2013, and is currently serving a twelve-year prison term on fraud charges related to the loan.

Several Clinton cronies showed up with Bill to a 2011 Housing Expo that cost more than $2 million to stage. Bill Clinton said it would be a model for the construction of thousands of homes in Haiti. In reality, no homes have been built. A few dozen model units were constructed but even they have not been sold. Rather, they are now abandoned and have been taken over by squatters.

THE SCHOOLS THEY NEVER BUILT

USAID contracts to remove debris in Port-au-Prince went to a Washington-based company named CHF International. The company’s CEO David Weiss, a campaign contributor to Hillary in 2008, was deputy U.S. trade representative for North American Affairs during the Clinton administration. The corporate secretary of the board, Lauri Fitz-Pegado, served in a number of posts in the Clinton administration, including assistant secretary of commerce.The Clintons claim to have built schools in Haiti. But the New York Times discovered that when it comes to the Clintons, “built” is a term with a very loose interpretation. For example, the newspaper located a school featured in the Clinton Foundation annual report as “built through a Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to Action.” In reality, “The Clinton Foundation’s sole direct contribution to the school was a grant for an Earth Day celebration and tree-building activity.”

USAID contracts also went to consulting firms such as New York–based Dalberg Global Development Advisors, which received a $1.5 million contract to identify relocation sites for Haitians. This company is an active participant and financial supporter of the Clinton Global Initiative. A later review by USAID’s inspector general found that Dalberg did a terrible job, naming uninhabitable mountains with steep ravines as possible sites for Haitian rebuilding.

Foreign governments and foreign companies got Haitian deals in exchange for bankrolling the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation lists the Brazilian construction firm OAS and the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) as donors that have given it between $1 billion and $5 billion.

The IDB receives funding from the State Department, and some of this funding was diverted to OAS for Haitian road-building contracts. Yet an IDB auditor, Mariela Antiga, complained that the contracts were padded with “excessive costs” to build roads “no one needed.” Antiga also alleged that IDB funds were going to a construction project on private land owned by former Haitian president Rene Preval — a Clinton buddy — and several of his cronies. For her efforts to expose corruption, Antiga was promptly instructed by the IDB to pack her bags and leave Haiti.

In 2011, the Clinton Foundation brokered a deal with Digicel, a cell-phone-service provider seeking to gain access to the Haitian market. The Clintons arranged to have Digicel receive millions in U.S. taxpayer money to provide mobile phones. The USAID Food for Peace program, which the State Department administered through Hillary aide Cheryl Mills, distributed Digicel phones free to Haitians.
Digicel didn’t just make money off the U.S. taxpayer; it also made money off the Haitians. When Haitians used the phones, either to make calls or transfer money, they paid Digicel for the service. Haitians using Digicel’s phones also became automatically enrolled in Digicel’s mobile program. By 2012, Digicel had taken over three-quarters of the cell-phone market in Haiti.

O’Brien secured three speaking engagements in his native Ireland that paid $200,000 apiece. These engagements occurred right at the time that Digicel was making its deal with the U.S. State Department. O’Brien has also donated lavishly to the Clinton Foundation, giving between $1 million and $5 million sometime in 2010–2011.

Coincidentally the United States government paid Digicel $45 million to open a hotel in Port-au-Prince. Now perhaps it could be argued that Haitians could use a high-priced hotel to attract foreign investors and provide jobs for locals. Thus far, however, this particular hotel seems to employ only a few dozen locals, which hardly justifies the sizable investment that went into building it. Moreover, there are virtually no foreign investors; the rooms are mostly unoccupied; the ones that are taken seem mainly for the benefit of Digicel’s visiting teams.

In addition, the Clintons got their cronies to build Caracol Industrial Park, a 600-acre garment factory that was supposed to make clothes for export to the United States and create — according to Bill Clinton — 100,000 new jobs in Haiti. The project was funded by the U.S. government and cost hundreds of millions in taxpayer money, the largest single allocation of U.S. relief aid.

Yet Caracol has proven a massive failure. First, the industrial park was built on farmland and the farmers had to be moved off their property. Many of them feel they were pushed out and inadequately compensated. Some of them lost their livelihoods. Second, Caracol was supposed to include 25,000 homes for Haitian employees; in the end, the Government Accountability Office reports that only around 6,000 homes were built. Third, Caracol has created 5,000 jobs, less than 10 percent of the jobs promised. Fourth, Caracol is exporting very few products and most of the facility is abandoned. People stand outside every day looking for work, but there is no work to be had, as Haiti’s unemployment rate hovers around 40 percent.

The Clintons say Caracol can still be salvaged. But former Haitian prime minister Jean Bellerive says, “I believe the momentum to attract people there in a massive way is past. Today, it has failed.” Still, Bellerive’s standard of success may not be the same one used by the Clintons. After all, the companies that built Caracol with U.S. taxpayer money have done fine — even if poor Haitians have seen few of the benefits.
Then there is the strange and somehow predictable involvement of Hillary Clinton’s brother Hugh Rodham. Rodham put in an application for $22 million from the Clinton Foundation to build homes on ten thousand acres of land that he said a “guy in Haiti” had “donated” to him.

“I deal through the Clinton Foundation,” Rodham told the New York Times. “I hound my brother-in-law because it’s his fund that we’re going to get our money from.” Rodham said he expected to net $1 million personally on the deal. Unfortunately, his application didn’t go through.

Rodham had better luck, however, on a second Haitian deal. He mysteriously found himself on the advisory board of a U.S. mining company called VCS. This by itself is odd because Rodham’s resume lists no mining experience; rather, Rodham is a former private detective and prison guard.

The mining company, however, seems to have recognized Rodham’s value. They brought him on board in October 2013 to help secure a valuable gold mining permit in Haiti. Rodham was promised a “finder’s fee” if he could land the contract. Sure enough, he did. For the first time in 50 years, Haiti awarded two new gold mining permits and one of them went to the company that had hired Hillary’s brother.
The deal provoked outrage in the Haitian Senate. “Neither Bill Clinton nor the brother of Hillary Clinton are individuals who share the interest of the Haitian people,” said Haitian mining representative Samuel Nesner. “They are part of the elite class who are operating to exploit the Haitian people.”

Is this too harsh a verdict? I wouldn’t go so far as to say the Clintons don’t care about Haiti. Yet it seems clear that Haitian welfare is not their priority. Their priority is, well, themselves. The Clintons seem to believe in Haitian reconstruction and Haitian investment as long as these projects match their own private economic interests. They have steered the rebuilding of Haiti in a way that provides maximum benefit to themselves.

No wonder the Clintons refused to meet with the Haitian protesters. Each time the protesters showed up, the Clintons were nowhere to be seen. They have never directly addressed the Haitians’ claims. Strangely enough, they have never been required to do so. The progressive media scarcely covered the Haitian protest. Somehow the idea of Haitian black people calling out the Clintons as aid money thieves did not appeal to the grand pooh-bahs at CBS News, the New York Times, and NPR.

For most Democrats, the topic is both touchy and distasteful. It’s one thing to rob from the rich but quite another to rob from the poorest of the poor. Some of the Democratic primary support for Bernie Sanders was undoubtedly due to Democrats’ distaste over the financial shenanigans of the Clintons. Probably these Democrats considered the Clintons to be unduly grasping and opportunistic, an embarrassment to the great traditions of the Democratic party.